I Love You So Much Mom
by Charmed Ravenclaw
Summary: Those words should have made her happy but unexpectedly, something in Piper broke. She had heard those words before, eight years ago. Those were the last words the Other Chris had said to her before he...


**I Love You So Much Mom**

Chris normally spent his Sunday mornings sleeping in and taking advantage of the reprieve from waking up early for school. However, today he couldn't wait to get up. This Sunday was Mother's Day and today Leo, Wyatt and Chris were going to make Piper breakfast in bed as a present. He wanted to make sure he woke up early for it, so as a result he was too excited to go to sleep last night. That was okay though; an eight-year-old running on adrenaline had enough energy for anything. As soon as the first few rays of sunlight peeked into his bedroom window he immediately threw back the sheets and bounded to Wyatt's room.

Chris only had to knock on the door twice before a sleepy-eyed Wyatt opened the door, rubbing his eyes. Adult steps practically thundered down the corridor and he turned to see his father winking at him. Leo put a finger to his lips and the three of them headed towards the kitchen.

"So, what should we make Mommy for breakfast?" he asked.

"Bacon, eggs and French toast," Wyatt said.

"Pancakes," Chris said at the same time. The two boys scowled at each other.

"How about we make both?" Leo suggested before the fight escalated. Wyatt and Chris both nodded and Chris went about the kitchen finding the various mixing bowls and measuring cups while Wyatt asked, "What's in French toast Dad?"

"No idea," Leo replied. What could the man say? He never had a need to make French toast back in the 1930's and since marrying Piper he never really needed to cook.

"Eggs, sugar, milk and butter," Chris said. "And bread. Don't forget the bread."

Wyatt gave Chris a disbelieving look. As if his younger brother could know more than him! Leo, noticed this and quickly suggested, "Why don't we just make bacon and eggs?"

After all, all you had to do was fry the bacon and eggs. There wasn't really much Leo and Wyatt could screw up with bacon and eggs, right?

Leo retrieved the items from the fridge whilst Chris was rummaging around the cupboard for pancake ingredients. Leo smiled; that boy knew the kitchen better than he did. As Leo was frying up the bacon Wyatt watched Chris single-handedly crack an egg on the side of his bowl like a professional.

"How did you do that?" Wyatt asked Chris in slight awe.

"Do what?"

"Crack the egg with one hand!"

"Oh, that. I dunno I just know how to do it."

"Dad, can I fry the eggs?" Wyatt asked. Leo finished up with the bacon and Wyatt ran up to the frying pan, attempting to do what Chris did. Unfortunately he ended up squishing the egg and having some of the cracked shells dribble into the frying pan.

"How is it that you can do it and I can't?" Wyatt complained. He was the older brother! He should be better than the younger one; he was supposed to learn all the life skills first! How was it that his younger brother was better than him?

Chris only shrugged and mixed his batter.

Leo smiled. "He obviously just inherited his mother's good cooking genes."

_Still_, Leo noted, _there is something odd about the way Chris makes pancakes_. The longer he watched Chris the more obvious it became; Chris didn't move like an awkward clumsy eight-year-old who had to struggle with kitchen items that were too big for him. Instead he moved like a miniature adult that had taken these limitations into account and simply taken them into his stride, as if he had been doing it for years.

_Chris could just be a cooking prodigy_, Leo hoped.

"Chris, when did you learn how to make pancakes?" Leo asked casually.

"Mommy taught me," Chris replied, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. For most normal families, it would be the most obvious explanation.

"When?" Wyatt asked in a hurt voice. He didn't remember any pancake cooking sessions. Why didn't Mommy teach him? Was there some great cooking session that he had missed out on?

Chris frowned. "When you were out on one of your special trips with Dad."

It was Leo's turn to frown. "What special trips? Wyatt and I have never taken special trips without you Chris. When did this happen?"

Chris looked at his father with a wounded expression and instantly Leo was reminded of the Other Chris who had hated him and declared him a bad father.

"It happened all the time," Chris said.

Leo walked up to his son and put his hands on Chris's tiny shoulders. It felt strange to see Chris so young when the first time he met Chris was when he was twenty-one.

"Chris," he said firmly. "There is no way I would leave you out of anything. You know that, right?"

Chris nodded. He knew his father loved him; there were days when Leo had declared a boy's day out and he had taken Wyatt and Chris out to baseball games, amusement parks and the zoo. Chris remembered all this vividly. However, he also remembered being neglected as well. He couldn't remember specifically when Leo and Wyatt's special outings had happened, but he remembered they happened. However, these memories didn't consolidate with the others – he couldn't find exactly where they fit in with his other memories.

"You're just funny in the head," Wyatt declared immaturely. He didn't really mean it – he just wanted to get his family out of this weird funk they were in that he didn't understand. It worked.

"Am not!" Chris retorted.

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

Leo sighed in relief as the boys argued and he scraped Wyatt's sad excuse for fried eggs into the bin without him noticing. Wyatt hadn't even bothered trying to take out the broken eggshells from the burnt mess on the frying pan. _Well, at least he didn't burn himself_, Leo thought. He couldn't heal anymore and calling Paige to heal Wyatt after a cooking burn would just be plain embarrassing. Still, he would prefer that to the alternative of Piper yelling at him for being so careless in the kitchen with their boys.

Wyatt insisted on frying the next two eggs, which thankfully turned out much better than the first one. Chris had also insisted on frying the pancakes himself, although he didn't do it with the same childish enthusiasm that Wyatt had. It was more like he had suspected Leo would ruin his pancakes if he let him fry them.

* * *

After nearly fourteen years of being a Charmed One, Piper had developed keen senses for demons sneaking into her house. Therefore, when Leo had snuck out of her bed, of course she stirred awake. However, she continued to feign sleep – it was pretty bleedingly obvious what he was about to do on Mother's Day with the boys. Breakfast in bed was a cliché right out of the book. Nevertheless, that didn't stop the gesture from being very sweet, so she continued pretending to sleep and let the three boys have their fun.

There was a knock at the door. "Come in," Piper called out.

Leo came in carrying a tray laden with the food. There was even a small flower in a miniature vase balanced on the tray. Her two boys just launched themselves at her.

"HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM!" they shouted, tackling her in her bed. Piper laughed; she was going to miss this when they became six feet tall and too big to do this. She mussed up their hair and kissed both of them on their cheeks.

"Ooh, what is this?" she asked.

"We made you breakfast in bed," Wyatt declared happily.

"I see."

Leo laid the tray on her lap. Quietly she noted that the bacon was a little burnt and the eggs were too undercooked for her liking.

"I made the eggs," Wyatt said proudly.

Leo gave Piper a look and she immediately suppressed her inner food critic as she made a show of sampling the eggs. "Ooh, they're delicious!"

"I made the pancakes!" Chris said.

Piper's eyes legitimately widened as she sampled the pancakes. They were good! Really, really good. They were like sweet fluffy moments of happiness pressed against her tongue. She stared at her boy in surprise.

"Do you not like them?" Chris asked anxiously.

"No, no, it's not that peanut. These are amazing!" When on earth did Chris become such a professional cook? She couldn't remember teaching Chris how to make pancakes... but they tasted similar to a recipe she used to use, just tweaked a little. So where did Chris learn how to make pancakes?

Chris gave her a huge smile. "I love you so much Mom," he said as he threw his arms around her neck.

Those words should have made her happy but unexpectedly, something in Piper broke. She had heard those words before, eight years ago. Those were the last words the Other Chris had said to her before he...

Before she could help it tears were leaking out of her eyes and she was struggling to stop the sobs racking her body. She failed.

"Mommy, is something wrong?" Wyatt asked. Chris immediately sprang back and gave his mother a worried look.

He looked so much like the Other Chris. Well, of course he looked like the Other Chris, he _was_ Chris. Still, it hadn't been noticeable when he was a baby; babies do have a certain generic look about them. But now the green eyes and brown hair were fully formed. He was even giving her the same look the Other Chris would give her whenever he was worried.

"Mommy, are you okay?" Chris asked.

"I'm fine peanut." Piper gave a watery smile. "I'm just so happy I have two boys who love me so much."

Leo knew exactly what Piper was thinking. "Come on boys, why don't you two get dressed and brush your teeth. Then you can show Mommy your other presents."

The boys weren't entirely buying it but Wyatt gave his mother a reserved hug and they both left the room with troubled glance. Leo closed the door and Piper put her head in her hands allowing her emotions to completely take over.

"I'm so sorry," Piper said. Leo came over and drew her into a hug. "I just didn't expect it. He is so much like him. After all these years…"

Leo nodded. "I know what you mean."

"I didn't think to grieve for the Other Chris properly when he died. I just kept thinking, _His future will be rewritten_. He won't need to die in the first place because he won't need to go back to the past. He won't need to become that overprotective neurotic whitelighter because he and Wyatt will be happy in their future. But now I just see so much of the Other Chris in him I can't help but worry he is just fated to turn out the same way."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing personality-wise you know," Leo said with a slight frown. Truth be told, he was kind of hoping Chris would turn like the Other Chris so he would have his overprotective neurotic son back. Sure, Leo had clashed with the Other Chris over his suspicious secretive behaviour, but the Other Chris had a personality of his own and unknowingly, Leo had gradually grown to love it. When Gideon had cruelly ripped the Other Chris away from him, it had left an empty space inside of him Leo didn't even know existed. Of course, the conditions that led the Other Chris to become so neurotic weren't good but if their current Chris turned out like the Other Chris, Leo wouldn't feel as though the Other Chris was dead and replaced with someone else. The Other Chris would be a living memory in their Chris. Clearly Piper didn't feel the same way.

"Of course I love the Other Chris for who he was," Piper said quickly. "I'm just worried he'll… _end up_ the same way. I'm worried that he'll end up getting himself killed because he is… was so determined. How do we know he won't inherit those same traits and _end up_ exactly the same?"

Leo nodded. After Gideon had killed their son he went rampaging in the heavens trying to find the Other Chris's soul, to find out what happened to him, where he went. The Other Chris wasn't with the very confused and bewildered Grams, Prue and Patty. The Elders in charge of recycling souls had no idea where he went either – his soul never came to them. It was like he never existed. So where did the Other Chris's soul go? Did his soul get transported into the future?

Or did his floating soul not exist in this timeframe because, as Piper said, in this timeline Chris wouldn't need to come back in time so he won't die? After all, the Other Chris's death had sealed Gideon's death, permanently changing the timeline.

Leo didn't think that the Other Chris could be reincarnated into this Chris. The Elder's in charge of soul recycling confirmed that Chris had inherited someone else's soul, because if he needed to die in 2003 to get his own soul, his soul would be trapped in a paradoxical loop. After all the Other Chris, the Original Chris, had inherited his soul from someone else too. But where did Chris's other memories come from then?

Leo decided against telling Piper about the incident in the kitchen. She didn't need to know, at least not for now. It was Mother's Day after all, a day of celebration – even if it was a phony holiday cooked up by the Hallmark card company to sell cards.

"We don't," Leo said at last. "But we know that this time round we'll be there to protect Chris and Wyatt. We've learned all our mistakes from our past selves. You are a good mother Piper. We'll make sure the Chris and Wyatt don't ever hurt themselves like that."

Wyatt and Chris peeked into the room. Piper quickly pasted a smile on her face as she opened up their presents.

* * *

**A/N: Hi. I've been obsessing over Chris Halliwell lately so I thought I'd write this little story that was inspired by Mother's Day. I wrote it surprisingly quickly and the words flowed at my fingertips, which was nice. I always imagined it would be painful for Piper to hear those words coming out of her dying son's mouth.**

**I've also been reading a lot of Chris fanfiction lately, but I got a bit bored of the Revelation genre – Piper always ends up an overemotional crying wreck when in the series she has a much more pragmatic personality. However, I do have her crying here so you can point the hypocrite finger at me. But the abuse the other characters get who aren't Chris… *****whistles. I'm almost glad the series chose not to handle Chris's revelation in such an overdramatic way because it would have become a soap opera. So I decided to write something different instead.**

**I love how in most fanfiction there seem to be some universal truths that seem to be agreed upon. In numerous fanfictions it seems to be agreed that Wyatt can't cook and Chris can. I love how everyone has agreed on that. Wyatt does come off as immature here but he really is ten years old, unlike Chris who may have gained the personality of someone older than him. Besides, as an older sister with a younger brother who is much more intelligent than I, I was bound for fits of jealousy when my younger brother was proven to be smarter than me. So I don't think that behaviour is quite off the mark :)**

**I hope you enjoyed that feel free to give your thoughts on everything I just said in a review! Honestly, I'd love to have a discussion with you on the characters or anything else.**


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